Joyce E. Chaplin

In The First Scientific American: Benjamin Franklin and the Pursuit of Genius, Joyce E. Chaplin argues, “Science did indeed become part of public knowledge in the eighteenth century, and Benjamin Franklin is the ultimate proof of that. His life had the shape and texture that it did because of his abiding curiosity about nature and his interest in science” (pg. 5). Further, “Science is the knowledge of things; politics is power over people. During the eighteenth century, the two enterprises overlapped in fascinating ways” (pg. 8). The First Scientific American “examines the most important ways in which Franklin made his pursuits in the sciences and in public affairs inform and support each other” (pg. 8).
A young Franklin was aware of Newton’s Principia in 1726, though he never read it, and worked to ingratiate himself to Hans Sloane of the Royal Society. Chaplin argues these actions demonstrate that “he wanted to discover new things that would get noticed and get him noticed – hence his curiosity about the timing of eclipses at sea [which was one potential method to measure longitude] and about the way in which animal life was generated” (pg. 38). Returning to Philadelphia, “Franklin used his newspaper to circulate knowledge, including discoveries in the sciences. Indeed, the Pennsylvania Gazette is a very good measure of the popularization of natural science at midcentury” (pg. 49). Franklin also understood the role of society in structuring knowledge. Chaplin writes, “This was the central paradox of knowledge as people in Franklin’s era conceived of it: knowledge was sociable and collaborative, but not everyone could contribute to it” (pg. 55).
Following his invention of a new fireplace and early experiments, “through a series of introductions (some fortuitous, others stage-managed), Franklin slowly inserted himself into an Atlantic network of correspondents interested in natural philosophy. For him, entry into this network was an intellectual goal – and a great deal more” (pg. 93). It would also help him gain patrons. His electrical experiments easily earned him this fame. Chaplin writes, “It is easy to trace the spread of Franklin’s fame – it followed his Experiments and Observations on Electricity (1751). Initially brief, the essays went through five English editions from 1751 to 1774. Each included the primary electrical writings but then gathered more and more of Franklin’s letters and essays” (pg. 132). Chaplin argues, “Franklin may have been American, but his initial fame as a natural philosopher was not – it depended entirely on European approbation” (pg. 133). She continues, “Within two weeks of his arrival at Craven Street [in London], Franklin presented himself and the Pennsylvania Assembly’s complaints to the Penns; within three weeks, he attended his first meeting of the Society of Arts. He thus marked out the political and cultural paths he would continue to tread for the rest of his London career” (pg. 158). Further, “As Franklin extended his influence – through travel, correspondence, and force of character – his status as a philosopher became an essential passport in multiple realms” (pg. 161).
As the 1770s continued, Franklin’s influence in England waned. Despite this, “Abroad, his reputation continued to spread. In 1772, the Academie Royale des Sciences, the French equivalent of London’s Royal Society, elected Franklin an associé étranger (foreign member)” (pg. 207). Franklin’s interests also remained varied. Chaplin writes, “Franklin also knew that Cook’s first expedition would help answer a big question: how far away was the sun? The 1769 transit of Venus across the sun and the expanded dimensions of the British empire gave Britons a unique opportunity to determine the distance” (pg. 219). Shifting focus, Chaplin writes, “In one way, the American Revolution destroyed Franklin’s scientific career; the event made it impossible for him to maintain even the low level of activity he had managed in London while the crisis was brewing. But in another way, the Revolution guaranteed him immortal fame” (pg. 241). In this way, “he laid his reputation as a philosopher on the altar of the Revolution. He guaranteed his apotheosis as a genius but sacrificed any time to do further work in the sciences” (pg. 242).
Following the Revolution, “Franklin would be less troubled by fame at home. In the United States, he was not quite the idol he was in France” (pg. 312). Chaplin writes, “Because science was becoming somewhat more specialized, it was being divided from other realms of knowledge, including politics” (pg. 312). After Franklin’s death, Chaplin concludes, “Throughout Europe, the idea that men of science should enlist in public affairs was on the wane at the turn of the nineteenth century. If anything, genius was now thought to separate a person from the world” (pg. 343).… (meer)

In Subject Matter: Technology, the Body, and Science on the Anglo-American Frontier, 1500-1676, Joyce E. Chaplin seeks to answer if, and how, the English conquered America. In the process, she draws extensively on the work of Edward Said and Richard White. Looking at the role of natural philosophy, Chaplin writes, “There was a long delay between 1620, when [Sir Francis] Bacon might have suggested a causal relationship between science and empire, and the eighteenth century, when Europeans would accept that connection” (pg. 1). She concedes that the English viewed similarities between their own and the Indians’ role in nature, but with a key caveat, writing, “The English believed that they shared with Indians the task of subjecting nature to human control, but concluded that the truly inferior material entities in the Americas were the bodies of its native peoples, who were to be subjected to the English” (pg. 9). To that end, her book “reexamines what happened as the English colonized America and as theories of nature were being redefined in order to explore the connections between these developments without making an anachronistic argument about ‘science’ and empire” (pg. 11). In this way, she questions “the tendency of poststructural theory to portray colonizers as components of a cultural or linguistic field of containment, rather than as agents whose creativity and intentionality are worth serious consideration” (pg. 23-24). She concludes of the historiography, “Scholars’ premature differentiation of Europeans and Indians in the early modern era has assumed that a stereotypical pre-scientific ‘savage mind’ predated the Columbian encounter; rather, I will argue, it was a product of it” (pg. 28).
Examining the earliest phase of English colonization, Chaplin writes, “Three sets of ideas were especially relevant for colonizers: hypotheses about the physical nature of new territories, information about technology appropriate to the resources of new places, and assessments of the human bodies suited to these places” (pg. 14). To this end, “Demystifying nature, displaying bodily strength, and using technology all became measures of colonial power” (pg. 15). Chaplin describes the creation of racial identity, writing, “The English were not yet certain that human bodies were intrinsically (rather than superficially) different, nor that their technological abilities made them substantially different from Indians” (pg. 66). Most of the material comparing the English and Indians comes from war, as this was the most common cultural interface that “provided the main opportunity for ethnographic observation” (pg. 81). Chaplin writes, “Fascination with the enemy’s appearance (and weapons) thus operated as a pre-racial assessment of alien peoples; the English in America continued to scrutinize Indians’ bodies without yet concluding that they were intrinsically different from their own. This was a highly gendered comparison, specific to English constructions of masculinity and of war, that would contrast to later settlers’ concern with women and procreation” (pg. 84-85). Gender and the body thus play a key role in her examination. The English, desperate for an advantage in colonization and keenly aware of early Spanish efforts, turned to their physical countenance. Chaplin writes, “The English were finally finding the colonizing strength particular to their nation: their bodies. If other nations had had greater navigational prowess, better ability to discover mines, and swifter military control over native populations, the English could make up for lost time by planting themselves in America and breeding there” (pg. 116-117).
These understandings of nature and their intersection with government continued to develop through the seventeenth century, though the English used them to further justify their occupation of British North America. Chaplin writes, “Increasingly, the English used conceptions of nature as well as of the state to argue that people like the Chickahominy were not as natural to America as the colonists were. Interpretation of Indian reaction to European diseases grounded this claim, and reluctance to intermarry with natives evidenced fear that the weakness of Indian bodies might be passed on generationally” (pg. 157). At the same time, “Gender was particularly important to this perception [of native cultural hybridity]. Indian women’s acquisition of European technology and exchanges between Indian and English women were easy to represent positively, perhaps because for the English these actions seemed the antithesis of the military interface between native and colonial men and safer than sexual relations across cultural lines” (pg. 215). Finally, in terms of religion, “Condemnation of vitalism (the belief that spirit existed in all matter) gave English colonists a new way to criticize native beliefs” (pg. 284). Chaplin concludes that late seventeenth century “definitions of natural philosophy and native ignorance or weakness similarly implied that the superiority of knowledge among the English would work toward the ends of empire without the use of force” (pg. 316).… (meer)

Benjamin Franklin has always been a fascinating figure to me. Of course, that was just the created folk-hero persona of the man flying his kite in the rainstorm, napping during the Continental Congress and waking to shout one-liners he created during his period as a printer of Poor Richard's Almanac. Seeing this book, I hoped to get more on the scientific side of Mr. Franklin, and that's exactly what I got.

This book goes through Franklin's entire history from the viewpoint of his scientific observations. He was a man of learning, though he never went to college (lack of funds). That didn't stop him from pursuing knowledge in all forms for his entire life, though. Benjamin Franklin was a visionary, an observer of natural phenomenon, a man in search of answers. He helped shape many of the major theories of the day, especially those relating to electricity and the study of the Gulf Stream.

What I found fascinating is how little he wanted to be involved in politics, even though that is primarily what he is remembered for now. He was forced by circumstance (and the power of the positions in society he worked his way into) to often set aside his experimental mind in order to help his fledgling nation make its way in the world. Imagine how much more he could have done if politics hadn't gotten in the way.… (meer)